Tag: pandemic

A few weeks ago as the seriousness of this pandemic started to elevate here in Los Angeles, I decided to call by 68-year old mother to make sure she is all right. It went straight to voice mail. Hmph. Knowing the nature of my relationship with my mom, I automatically wondered if I did anything to piss her off? Or maybe she just couldn’t take the call.

So I called again when I got home from work. Again, straight to voicemail. Strange. Even though we get mad at each other from time to time, she always picks up the phone. But whatever.

Then was my big moving day. I gave her a call again that night after the movers were gone. Voicemail. I then sent a text saying that I moved and wondering how she was doing.

Nothing. Days and days of nothing as everything here in Los Angeles County was shutting down, as the number of cases exponentially increased, as my anxiety over my mom grew and grew.

Finally a couple of weeks ago in the early morning, my mom first sends me a text message then a message on Kakao Talk (a Korean SMS app.) She texts me in Korean, I text her in English. It also doesn’t help that she misspells a lot of things in Korean.

Basically, she was stuck in Peru. I was relieved and pissed. She had left for Peru on March 11 to go see Cusco and Machu Picchu, the pandemic got real, Peru shut everything down and she got stuck.

On my birthday on Friday, she managed to get a flight to the States and got home on Saturday. She’s fine, although with the dust and pollen that built up in her house her allergies are on fire.

I imagined friends and family being able to drop by my new place to check it out and give me suggestions about how to decorate, which furniture goes better where and all that other stuff you rely on your friends for.

But as we are all stuck indoors, I just have to be satisfied with myself. And trust me, that I have no problems doing.

It is weird to be in the middle of a move while we are all being told to stay home. Last Saturday before life shut down, I had a moving crew move my big furniture to the new place. I scheduled junk guys to clean out the rest of the apartment today, and fortunately they made it.

But it was strange driving from Downtown LA to San Pedro with no traffic. Well, there were cars on the freeway, but I got to cruise a nice 80 the whole way down. What would usually take about an hour took me only 30 minutes.

So now here is my old bedroom that I grew up in which became my guest room:

Here is my new place:

I can’t wait until this is over so I can get more furniture. But wishes, dreams and wonder: I guess that is life during pandemic.